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Daily Kos: Open Letter to that 53% Guy
I think you'll find it entirely empty of character attacks and filled with good 'ole fashioned, time-tested rational reasonableness.
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Activate 99%er counterpunch!
Daily Kos: Open Letter to that 53% Guy
I think you'll find it entirely empty of character attacks and filled with good 'ole fashioned, time-tested rational reasonableness.
@boost
You can err on side of everything is your fault or you can err on the side where everything is someone elses fault. I choose to err on the side where everything is my fault, in general this produces better outcomes in my life. Now, this works for me, it may not work for you.
!luck
I'm not saying the movement is wrong because I think the movement is correct. I think it's a lost cause but that's another story. But most people who write the I'm the 99% are entitled morons.
@!luck
No, you sound like you blame all poor people for being poor.
... or do you blame yourself for that too?
What I have seen lately is a complete and total lack of empathy by society in general. How long does something that is completely wrong have to keep happening to everyone around you for it to actually be wrong and need change? As long as the bubble you live in remains pristine, all is well and fuck everyone else.
A month ago people were asking "where are the jobs"? Today, people are asking "why don't these protesters get a job"? Like jobs now started to grow on trees whereas a month ago no one seeded said tree yet. I thought that the unemployment level started all this unrest in the first place. Well that, and also the fact that the situation forced a few people to wake the fuck up and smell the coffee about the wrongs of a purely capitalistic system in which everything's for profit. Even prisons, hospitals, schools and shit. No one realized this before it's too late.
As long as one feels financially secure, fuck the world around him or her. This is wrong. if you don't care about those with whom you share this world, no one will care about you when it's your turn to sit in front of the fan which shit is about to hit. Like it or not, we are all in this together.
Unrelated, yet related
Keiser Report: Pirates & Protesters (E197) - YouTube
Also, before forming some kind of stupid opinion like a Homer Simpson apprentice, read The Big Short by Michael Lewis.
Read. Turn off the telly, leave the internets for a second and read. Reading is genuinely good for you.
Oh I thought !Luck was pointing that pic out b/c of how nonsensical it was...I mean this makes sense rite:
I want to go to college! - Great!
Tuition is too high- Get a job and save money or take out a loan!
There are no jobs, especially not any that pay well enough to save for school- SHOULDA WENT TO COLLEGE...
:clap: QFMFT.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer
but seriously, the blank stares I usually get when I talk to friends/colleagues of mine who are not total retards about this or related topics makes be a strong believer that we're all really, really screwed.
Less discussion more action. Nothing pisses me off more than people who call me an entitled spoiled prick but have never even considered donating time or money to charity. I may be an entitled spoiled prick but at least I've tried to help those around me. Unlike certain wankers who are just like LOL SELFISH TRUST FUND BABY ASSHOLE, doesn't give a damn about anyone else.
Want to help? Grab a ladle, do some volunteer work and then come criticize but until then stfu.
Talk you want about social injustice and wealth inequality but until you start doing something about it your words remain empty and this issue remains up in the ivory tower.
FYPQuote:
Originally Posted by bikes
Is he the dude who did liars poker? I liked that.
goddamnit it seems i missed the berlin demonstrations
And Moneyball, yes.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanAronG
53% arguments are ALL non sequitur, and they quite literally have no clue what's going on. These guys work their asses off for an itty bitty slice of the pie, then point the fingers at people who have it worse than them. The irrationality is mind blowing. And that's exactly why the fat class win the class warfare
If you don't like this guy, so what, he illustrates it absolutely correctly
Occupy Reality - YouTube
The 53% is a dig based in the Fox Noise lies about who pays taxes, and the 99% are trying to get policy that would keep 53%ers from ever becoming a 99%ers as well as giving them equal opportunity for their hard work to actually pay off
Do not underestimate peoples' ability to rationalize positions that are incorrect and unwittingly support policy that hurts themselves
Reading rillas link. It's more appropriate than mine. It's usually better to offer olive branches than throw stones. Throwing stones is fun though
I worry about my family, myself, and my friends. It's a rough world out there and I don't think anyone is denying that. So to me, I made the decision to focus on supporting those 3 groups of people. The system here isn't fair, but I rather spend my time finding ways to exploit this system and get these crumbs then trying to start a failed revolution. I know many/most here won't agree with that.Quote:
Originally Posted by eugmac
I have more to say and I will when I get a little more time.
!luck
IMO this isn't failed revolution by a long shot. Frankly, I'm very surprised, I didn't think the US had it in them to do something as successful as OWS has been. This is what revolution looks like. It's only about 2% of it, but this is it. Campaign of awareness, solidarity, protest, and pressure is what makes change, it's just not overnight. The American Revolution lasted like 8 years. They were fucking shooting people and dying in fields, and that still took 8 years.
Logistically, OWS is a big fucking deal. A. Big. Deal. People are vastly underestimating this. Populism protest and awareness is what makes change. The pressure is building and building. Life isn't a montage, this shit takes a long damn time and a lot of damn work. Don't forget that
Boost, that book is fantastic!
Here's a link to the first chapter, I think it's like a teaser to make you buy the book so I think the link is ok. It's about an hours read give or take and it's absolutely brilliant.
The Maddow Blog - "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis - read the first chapter free
Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
really? These relative extremes are the only two options? Really?
awesome line.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanAronG
Discussion plays a huge roll in any populist movement. A populist movement is the antithesis of a dictatorship, where discussion has no intrinsic value.Quote:
Originally Posted by bikes
As for the volunteer stuff... careful when you go down that path. I'm not calling you an entitled prick, but entitled pricks often use volunteer work to pacify their guilty conscience. I'd argue that simply backing up the protesters, supporting their efforts, and spreading the word will probably do more to better the world than ladling some soup a few hours a month for the rest of your life.
Doh, meant Jack Sawyer, not you.
http://s3.amazonaws.com/kym-assets/e...gif?1293729577Quote:
Originally Posted by DanAronG
People getting arrested for attempting to close their bank accounts:
NYC Citibank Occupation Arrests - YouTube
wow.. the end was just fucked. What were they getting arrested for? It seems they were smart and had only citibank customers?Quote:
Originally Posted by BooG690
There's a huge march going on in the city right now. Part of it was to get people to say "Eff you banks, we're closing out accounts." These people got arrested. So sick.
I can't recall having called you "an entitled spoiled prick" or anything else rewally so I assume you're not talking to or about me but this particular post kind of attracted my attention there. How do those things correlate? Do you have to donate time and/or money to charity in order to not be "an entitled spoiled prick"?Quote:
Originally Posted by bikes
What pisses me off is people who have no idea about WTF is going on around them (beyond their pristine and precious bubble) forming idiotic opinions on WTF is going on around them, without even having the decency to educate themselves on the issues at hand first. Like Paris Hilton having an opinion on Wall St.
Random biased opinion: 99% of the trust fund babies I know are total and complete selfish assholes. 99%, get it?Quote:
Originally Posted by bikes
This is the big fucking problem. There comes a point where it's not OK to fuck people over at willy nilly without consequence. Life is not a god damned poker game. We should give a damn about what happens to someone else in our society, and when we see that it's not OK, we should stand up against it. Together.Quote:
Originally Posted by bikes
Not only when said thing happening just happens to affect us directly as well.
Case in point: Raise the retirement age! Most of use are in the 20 - 40 demographic, so we don't give a shit about this. That is, until we slowly but surely creep towards 60, and learn that you will have to keep working for at least 10 years before enjoying your pension. When will you enjoy life? Run around with the grand kids in the yard? Smell the roses? The money you have deposited will most likely be enjoyed by someone else as well, because if there is one thing that is sure in this world, it is that tomorrow isn't guaranteed for any of us.
Do we give a shit? No. Until we are 60. Then we start giving a shit (perhaps literally in our diapers as well) but by then it's way too fucking late. That train passed the station a loooooong time ago.
You need to know WHY things are the way they are and HOW they got to be the way they are before you can do anything to remedy them, and for this a modicum of knowledge is required: this is the reason why imho you should educate yourself as well as you can on the issues at hand before spouting bullshit or think you are William Wallace, Robin Hood or Peter Pan (Michael Jackson).
We have to inform ourselves on current issues. Know WTF is going on the why and the how. Then we can device ways to combat and hopefully eliminate these problems.
And because of this, we should read.
I know I'm behind on this thread, but I'll just give my two cents, which is basically just trying to cut through some of the rhetoric:
Pre-Cliffnotes: Not that anyone who criticizes Occupy Wall Street, endorses the Tea Party and not to set up any other similar sorts of false dichotomies between the two not-necessarily-related-movements, but I do think that comparing the two movements and the differing rhetoric the media's birthed in response to it can help to get us to a bit of a stasis (which I try to do in the conclusion).
Example 1: There's this lovely talking point that's sprouted up all of the sudden about how X movement is "muddled", "leaderless", not taking official stances, no one know's what they're protesting anyway, etc. I emphasize again that this has sprouted up all of the sudden, as far as I can tell. I don't really recall this being a very common talking point when talking about this group (as per the Tea Party's wikipedia page): "The Tea Party movement has no central leadership, but is composed of a loose affiliation of national and local groups that determine their own platforms and agendas." The Tea Party movement generally thinks big government is bad and doesn't want the government to overstep their constitutional powers--this of course doesn't mean that everyone in the Tea Party movement, for example, wants NO government, though a small percentage do, but there's kind of just a big spectrum of somewhere between "don't go any further than you already are with this health care business and jobs bills, etc." (I'm not even sure every Tea Partier is against the jobs bills) and "no government at all, blow it up and let the people rebuild it" and pretty much everything in between. The Occupy Wall Street generally thinks corporatocracy is bad and doesn't want a small percentage of people having a disproportionate power--this of course doesn't mean that everyone in the OWS movement, for example, wants NO corporations, though a small percentage do, but there's kind of just a big spectrum of somewhere between "stop bailing these people out and stop taxing them less proportionately than the rest of us are taxed" (I'm not even sure every OWSer is saying that the 1% needs to be taxed more) and "no wall street and no corporations at all and blow it up and let the people rebuild it" and pretty much everything in between. This doesn't mean that one is right and the other is wrong or necessarily that they're both right or that they're both wrong; it just means that it doesn't make sense for the media to laud the awesome, non-affiliatedness of the grassrootsedness of one movement while citing the unofficialness of another movement as the EXACT reason for ignoring them/not taking them seriously/mocking them.
Example 2: This one will be much more brief. There are idiots/communists/hippies/pot smokers/banjo players/people wearing weird clothes/etc. at the OWS rallies. There's also this channel that tracks dozens of acts of idiocy from the Tea Partiers: NewLeftMedia's Channel - YouTube. This is like the oldest, most debunked piece of rhetorical garbage in the universe (and I suspect that every halfway sensible person knows this, yet whenever it supports their argument, they seem to ignore it for a bit), but it still continually get used. I don't want to get into which movement has received more of this stereotyping/strawmaning/ad homineming/etc., and what the specific demographics and ratios of dumbness->somewhat sensible but not super intelligent->OMG genius protesters and which has gotten their deserved appreciation/mockery for intelligence because it's not relevant to my point. My point is really just they're probably similar enough to each other (and probably similar enough to every american protest all the way back to the revolution) for us to agree that it's just another protest that doesn't deserve a special exception for being idiots.
Conclusion: Stop with the tired old wordsmithing that clouds this whole issue. They're not any worse than most any other protest, and they're probably not any better (I mean intrinsically in respect to their protesting itself, not in respect to WHAT they're protesting). For the love of a greased up baby jesus can we just talk about the issues. The Tea Party generally believes that a bigger government is bad: is that a valid or invalid point? The OWS generally believes A) that there's a small, wealthy portion of the population that has too much power and B) this is bad: is that a valid or invalid point?
I guess saying the two protests are similar except for in respect to the issues they're actually fighting for, means that we can also compare the response--that is, both the police response and the media's response. and you might be able to get some meaningful stuff out of that, so I guess it's not ALL about the issues. but my point is that these "the movement is inherently flawed because of X, but this other movement is great" arguments and their converse are stupid.
I was certainly not directing any of my comments at you or anyone itt.
raising the retirement age is perfectly reasonable given life expectancy and quality of life keep increasing. when social security was released the average american life expectancy was 68 now it's around 80, doesn't it make sense to raise the age for retirement?Quote:
Case in point: Raise the retirement age! Most of use are in the 20 - 40 demographic, so we don't give a shit about this. That is, until we slowly but surely creep towards 60, and learn that you will have to keep working for at least 10 years before enjoying your pension. When will you enjoy life? Run around with the grand kids in the yard? Smell the roses? The money you have deposited will most likely be enjoyed by someone else as well, because if there is one thing that is sure in this world, it is that tomorrow isn't guaranteed for any of us.
Do we give a shit? No. Until we are 60. Then we start giving a shit (perhaps literally in our pants as well) but by then it's way too fucking late. That train passed the station a loooooong time ago.
How is it anyone's fault but her and her son's that she made a bad decision because her son is a scumbag? Throwing her on the street harsh obviously but this is the risk you take when you sign something so obviously dumb. Her son obviously is a giant scumbag though. Yes bankers are to share some of the blame here but I place most of it on her, i cant think of another word to describe him so i'm going to overuse, scumbag of a son.Quote:
How exactly do you combat the bullshit that Ze Bankers have done continuously for such a long time by giving to charity or by joining some volunteer organization? How do you combat Citizen's United v. FEC by giving to charity or by joining some volunteer organization? How can you help this woman if you don't even know it's happening? By giving to charity or by joining some volunteer organization?
When does the housekeeper realize, "maybe i'm biting off here a lot more than I can chew" and cut his houses into something far more sustainable. when does he/she realize, yeah i can get all this w/e cars/houses/living beyond his/her means but maybe i shouldn't because theres no way in fuck i can afford all this. when does it all kick in that hey maybe taking 1mil in loans is a piss poor idea because theres no way in fuck that i can afford to pay it all back making 40k a year? I have 0 sympathy for these people it's greed on both sides by the bankers and the 'housekeepers' who lived far far beyond their means and now look for a scapegoat because it certainly cannot be their fault.Quote:
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In the beginning of the mortgage drama, loans were given off left and right. All you had to do was show up and smile, and you'd get the money to buy whichever house you wanted. A housekeeper would own 5 houses, and still get loans to own more if she so wished. Nobody saw that this was wrong? Can we blame the housekeeper for having taken advantage of a loan that was pretty much automatice, or should we blame the banker who lent said housekeeper $1,000,000 despite the fact that she would only make $40,000 in a year and then packing up said loan and selling it to some other poor fuck as a AAA MBS or some other kind of financial instrument, completely invented by someone? OF COURSE she's gonna take the money, and maybe even in good faith hopes that she will be able to pay it back. Of course it's all bullshit.
No one saw that this was wrong and there had to be something really fucked up going on? Really? In the words of that CNN bitch: Seriously?
And that is just one of the issues. There are literally tons of issues where people fuck others for no other reason than to make moar monies. Prisons, healthcare, education, the fucking transit system and a whole host more.
How the hell do these people do these things and get to walk?
---------------------
i'm not saying there isn't a problem because there obviously is. its a big fucking problem, do i know how to solve it? no sir, but imo the way they are trying now simply is unfeasible and will not work.
if i had to say how to correct i would start by putting a massive limit on campaign contributions and nationalize a few companies but this is equally as impossible as the demands from the 99%'ers.
I do hope you're not referencing the demands posted on their website by Anonymous. Those aren't the demands of the 99%ers.Quote:
Originally Posted by bikes
I'm going off of this.
Occupy Wall Street - Official Demands - coupmedia.org
which is the first thing you get when you type into google
the anonymous one was been thoroughly torn apart by people far smarter than me and discussed itt so no need to bring that up again
All I have to go by is my own life and the observation of the limited number of people I know plus whatever I read. And those that "take responsibility" tend to do "better". There is spectrum of everything my fault ----- everything someone elses fault. All I was saying is I would rather be wrong by taking too much then too little. In my experience, those who take too little have shitty lives, based on my own value system. As bad as it is to say it here on this forum, I have hard time enough taking care of those closet to me to really worry about some kid not being able to be an "artist". I made some shitty sacrifices in my life to be "practical". So I have no sympathy for those are are not willing to do same. The story changes a bit when you are talking about those who really have it shitty, but a lot of those protesters live in completely different reality.Quote:
Originally Posted by boost
Even the comments here about how the reason "we" are okay with raising retirement age is because it doesn't affect us, makes all in favor of this look like insensitive assholes. Where truth of the matter the current system isn't sustainable. And retirement age should be raised. Costs aside, im all for everyone retiring at 50 or 40 or whatever, but the world has tradeoffs and many people (not aimed at anyone in this thread) simply refuse to believe that. A lot of my facebook friends are the type to make blanket statements of retirement age should be lowered. For political reasons, I can't say what i really think there, but here I can effectively vent at what I think is just plain dumb/shortsigned/unrealistic.
Call me jaded, call me dumb, call me privileged fuck, which I believe I am because like I mentioned before this country has so fucking easy compared to others that this is such BS.
I am not saying that the system is perfect. I too hate regulatory capture, which pisses me off, but I am not personally willing to risk shit to change it. That's truth right there. I'm out for those I care about. And the main reason I volunteer, and I do volunteer, is because it makes me feel good. If it didn't I wouldn't. Oh yeah, prob a decent part of my volunteering has to do with me trying to promote an image to certain entities that will financially benefit me in the future. Full disclosure FTW. Flame away.
!luck
So bankers break tons of laws that destroy tons of lives then they get rewarded for it, then the only time anybody talks about how laws can't be broken is when the poor screwed by those bankers attempt to right the wrongs?
Can't protest on public property, can't protest on private property; can only "protest" from within a jail cell while the people you're protesting drink 1k$ bottles of wine with money they stole from the protesters and violate human rights through technicalities
The Man punches you in the face a hundred times, then puts you in jail for punching back
But it has nothing to do with this. A very tiny minority of the people protesting or even affected by the whole crisis are "lazy hippies". Economic injustice is the problem; a small handful of incredibly wealthy interests are riding on the backs of the suffering masses. The middle class, regardless of how hard working the people in it, are being systematically squeezed for all we're worth. This has nothing to do with people protesting not being able to be artists, but protesting the enormous law breaking and thievery of the top class that is making everything less just and harder for everybody while sweeping some of those people completely under the rugQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
The fact that we're even talking about the protesters is proof that the corrupt powers are winning. They're committing insane amounts of fraud and breaking many other laws, yet NOBODY is trying to stop them. Except OWS. The only group of heroes among us are having fingers pointed at them because the top class know the way to win class warfare is to convince the lower classes to vilify each other
No, it shouldn't. This is a common belief because it's pushed by the big business media. The facts are that SS is one of the most well performing programs in the country's history, it is running a huge surplus, it is solvent for a couple decades at current levels, and would be solvent for a whole fucking century if all we did was make the rich contribute an equal amount. You don't hear about these facts from the media because an intact SS makes it harder to steal more moneyQuote:
Even the comments here about how the reason "we" are okay with raising retirement age is because it doesn't affect us, makes all in favor of this look like insensitive assholes. Where truth of the matter the current system isn't sustainable. And retirement age should be raised.
US is the richest nation on the planet. The money for a lower retirement age, tons of vacation days, full employment, universal health care, education for all, etc, already exists. The one and only problem is that the sociopaths have risen to the top, and they refuse to share the money they've stolen with bad laws
DIRTY DIRTY RIHANNA & THE OTHER 53% - YouTube
"No one made you sign that contract" I still disagree with this stance. Show a hungry person some food and he or she will do anything in his/her power to get a bite of said food. Show a person who looks for a home some free money and all he/she has to do is sign, will indeed sign to get access to said free money without really caring (or understanding) the consequences later.
This is basically legal loansharking. You know they can't pay you. You know for a fact that the person you are offering $5M to will never be able to pay you back, because of course as a diligent bank you did a background check. But you still lend him/her the money, on the condition that it must be used for a house and not something actually productive, such as starting a business. That person will never in a million years say no to money to get a home.
Multiply that case a million times and we get the mortgage crisis.
Nobody forced the bankers to break the law. Seriously, this whole thing is people blaming the people who buy snake oil and congratulating the snake oil salesman for making it big. I just stare and shake my head. Not much else to think. This is what it looks like when powerful people break laws then the masses defend them for it; a scenario I never thought could even happenQuote:
Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer
With such terribly bastardized ideas about "living within means". Soon the Fed will say that any greenback lower than 100$ is now worth half it's value, then they'll accuse the people for not living within their means. Same shit with housing and everything else. The financial system declared means were of certain value, people lived within those means, then the financial system pulled that rug out from under our feet, then we all get accused of being fools. We need to stop fucking defending the thieves, liars, murderers, and sociopaths at the top
Would we still be this rich if we had all of the above 100 years ago?Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
-!luck
Probably, I don't know. Some stuff, like education, wasn't really that important back then. That was a long time ago, and I don't know any details of what the economy was like. It's also mostly irrelevant as things like fiat currency and large corporations kinda weren't really standardQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
We're dealing with record level productivity squeezes. The productivity squeeze is why we have a sultan class riding on the back of high poverty rates, why the US doesn't have nearly as strong of middle class as other modern nations, and growth in wealth has been shown to happen despite this bad policy, not because of it
As an example, economics is really just accounting. There's some economic specific stuff, but it's just accounting on social level WRT goods and services and stuff. According to that accounting, universal health care is much cheaper and more effective than the US model. So, um, that means that our wealth and quality of living would go up with this "social welfare" program that people are brainwashed to hate. It's the same with most other social programs. Hell, other modern countries end up exporting a bunch of their talent that they paid for, and yet they STILL massively outperform US.
Wealth inequality is incredibly expensive for a society, wealth equality is incredibly frugal and valuable. The only reason most US citizens think otherwise is because we don't expect the media to be lying to us as profusely as they do
MOre about the lack of empathy. No one gives a shit about issues until *tag* they're it.
Case in point: Megyn Kelly and her materniity leave
Perhaps this is more of hypocrisy, but it boils down to the same thing.
Yeah, I'm with you Jack, the lack of empathy is really upsetting, especially from people who this movement is actually trying to help. Poor is poor, but its the middle class thats under attack in the current system, however its the middle class who seem more inclined to sit back and nit-pick rather than consider that actual spirit of the arguments being made.
Just because someone doesn't have the answers, doesn't mean they shouldn't be highlighting the issues.
I guess im just too brain washed to really see the society you're advocating and that i believe that many people giving the opportunity to live a life of leisure, even at subsistence level would choose that over working.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Or maybe i shouldn't engage in such discussions since I see the world as not that bad. With lots of opportunities to exploit the system.
I will give you an example. If I had to go back to college today, with today's prices I would prob work for a year, establish great credit. Then take out as many credit cards as I could and use that to pay my tuition, then after paying minimum payments through school and a mix of balance transfers at a cost of 3% a year. Graduate as fast as possible then default on the debt and have it discharged since at that point it wouldn't be a school loan.
Prob too late for me to be coherent.
!luck
I don't thinlk your non college going self is gonna have access to enough in credits cards from 1 yr of working to get you all the way through 4 yrs if a decent college. Also, unless you're studying art or something, once you been bankrupted, most decent companies will turn you down.
Also you guys should check out the big short, easily available for free online, I started it last night and it was so good I stayed up and read half of it.
If you can type all that out and still not see that the system is broken and needs a good fixin', I don't know what to say.Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanAronG
Hahahahaha NP, glad you liked it!
LOL srsly?Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
And this.Quote:
Originally Posted by eugmac
That's exactly what I'm arguing against. People living an undeserved life of leisure. Only a fraction of the sultans in our society have worked really hard for it, a lot of them are creating nothing and are actually drags on the society. The hardest workers in our world, by far, are the poor laborers. It's not even close. I am arguing for a society that recognizes that, and doesn't reward the sultans for being lucky and punish the hard workers for being unluckyQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Also, all those things I mentioned are not luxury. You could say somebody working to get an education is actually working harder than somebody who stopped looking for work because the system swept him under the rug. And you could definitely say somebody working towards an education works harder in one day than a Rothschild has his entire life. Manipulating numbers and power to generate free money and perpetual systemic theft isn't hard work. Why then do we deny the ability for people to work hard by giving them the education they need/want, while subsidizing the luxury of the fatasses sitting at the top smearing caviar all over their faces?
You said it yourself, Dude. Exploiting the system is quite detrimental to the masses who don't exploit and distort. It's what the bankers are doing. They exploit the system, make everything worse for everybody else, then get us to somehow agree with themQuote:
Or maybe i shouldn't engage in such discussions since I see the world as not that bad. With lots of opportunities to exploit the system.
I don't think negative thoughts about you or your opinions. Unique ways of looking at things often come out of different people from different regions and different experiences. I don't think it would be far off for me to say that to a Russian, US appears full of opportunity, and it is, relatively. But that doesn't negate the fact that the difference is one of degrees, not some kind of opportunistic paradigm. We still have incredible amounts of economic oppression in this country. Bankers are still breaking assloads of laws and stealing assloads of money. Perhaps in Russia, you don't have opportunity to go to school, whereas in US you do have the opportunity, but that comes with the price of being massively in debt for most of your life. Compare this to several other nations with overall weaker economic capacity than the US, yet they perform massively better WRT education.Quote:
Prob too late for me to be coherent.
It's a matter of priorities. Apparently in the US we prioritize subsidizing sultans. We prioritize demanding enormous prisons, enormous poverty rates, high unemployment rates, and massive debt. But in order to change that, we'd have to stop subsidizing the sultans, and we can't have that....
Here's an example of how powerful and successful OWS is
Eric Cantor On Occupy Wall Street: I'm Upset Democrats Are 'Joining In The Effort To Blame Others'
Cantor simply pulling back from that phrase and other rhetoric shows he's trying to utilize the populism for election purposes. OWS is liberal. Very liberal. OWS stands for everything the GOP establishment hates, YET the vilifying rhetoric is changing some. That shows exactly how powerful populism is.
If OWS can maintain formidable protests and strong solidarity for as long as needed, we have hope for change in this country. That's a guarantee. No amount of money from big donors trumps populist movements (in democratic countries, at least). Never has and never will. Only a fraction of voters need to shift their opinions based on OWS in order for the entire establishment to quake. US elections are a game of inches. Just a small portion of Florida or some combinations of OH IN NM CO NV swing voters finding appreciation for OWS with change everything
What is "hard work"? Do you assign more value to a person lifting bricks from X to Y, then someone who organizes a system that plans out the route for this person to take and makes it 5% more efficient. How do you value a manager of people vs. the person doing the "work". Knowing which ideas to invest in is a very valuable skill for society, do you not agree?Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Also, you seem to be advocating higher education for all, but does brick layer really need it? Who, in my area, make a good wage $30/hr+, if not more. Moreover, is an education in "art" really worth while? Or social sciences or history? As a human being knowing those things is very helpful, but from a pure usefulness perspective they don't generate value.
To those who say "decent" college education cost a lot. Mine was "only" 24k (total), WITH living expenses. And if I was less privileged I could have gotten for less, by attending community college for the first year, then transferring.
I guess what is odd to me is that you don't think people should ever have 100% leisure yet, you advocate tons of that via days off and early retirement. I read things like this and though I do not follow that it shows what is possible. I don't think that's really possible in many countries in this world.
"You said it yourself, Dude. Exploiting the system is quite detrimental to the masses who don't exploit and distort. It's what the bankers are doing. They exploit the system, make everything worse for everybody else, then get us to somehow agree with them"
Maybe the best way to bring down the system is to exploit it to the point that it can't survive anymore?
Lastly, to be clear im a Russian immigrant but an American citizen for a long time. So my context is based on parent stories and my own visits to the motherland, where a good portion of my family still lives and half are trying to desperately to immigrate here. Since the future is so bright here.
He is just changing his words, will he actually change his actions though? It's like that kid who steals and gets caught, and his mother asks do you know what you did is wrong? He goes yes. Then he says he is sorry but the moment he sees the opportunity to steal that delicious fucking cookie he will. Words mean nothing from those who have no integrity and I think you and I should be in agreement that there are few, if any, politicians that stand behind the shit they say, when shit hits the fan.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
I will say that I never thought that a movement could even change the rhetoric, so I am surprised and impressed. I just don't know where it is going.
!luck
This explains a lot tbh. The strongest conservatives are those who immigrated into this country. They'll never see anything wrong with its current state. My mom is the same way.Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
It isn't that I don't see the things that are wrong, I just see them on a different scale. Im not like whopie everything is perfect, just it is all relative. Fuck, Russia is a great place to be if your from some African country.Quote:
Originally Posted by BooG690
!luck
Right. I wasn't trying to insult you. I was serious in what I said. You appreciate America in relation to how it was in Russia.Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Sorry for the long post. I think I nutshell'd some rather important stuff though
I do agree. We're not talking about those people though. We're talking about mainly financial theft of a corrupt banking system, and secondarily a productivity squeeze where the money rises to the top and stays thereQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Higher education needs to be an option. In a nutshell, the primary reason the US used to be an economic powerhouse is the abundance of high paying/low skill jobs. Over the last 3/4 century, however, this has gradually gotten worse and worse. There are fewer low skill jobs and they pay less. High skill/education jobs have actually changed in that they used to be low wage, but are now really the only way to find consistency in high wages/employment. It is 100% truth to claim that in order to compete as a country, in order to have strong employment and middle class, we must have high education standards. The 30$/hr brick laying jobs are all gradually disappearingQuote:
Also, you seem to be advocating higher education for all, but does brick layer really need it? Who, in my area, make a good wage $30/hr+, if not more.
The other aspect of the solution that isn't about education would be if we countered the productivity squeeze by raising taxes on high earners. Back before the late 70s started, rich people were not NEARLY as rich as they are today. The reason they're much, much richer now is the productivity squeeze where fewer personnel can work harder. Labor costs drastically reduced, productivity drastically increased, and ALL the profits have been kept by the executives. The data backs this up 100%. If we decided that we don't want the paradigm shift brought by computers to fuck the middle class, we could raise taxes on those executives benefiting from the productivity squeeze to the point that wealth distribution returns to where it was in the Eisenhower days, and then we wouldn't need as high of education as you'd think since there would be substantially higher consumer demand and thus higher low-skill service sector jobs
Yes they are worthwhile, but also I understand exactly why they don't have the sort of competitive economic worth compared to degrees with accounting or compsci. I think as a society we should understand that money is not the end all be all. If we want a fucking culture worth having, we have to provide for a percentage of the populous to be artists. Maybe art doesn't sell, but do we really want to be nothing but sell-outs? In fact, true art SHOULDN'T sell. Steinbeck was one of the greatest writers in the world's history, yet was poor his entire life; Cobain captured an entire generation's imagination, yet he killed himself at the height of success; countless physicists and engineers are responsible for all the tech we have today, yet they developed none of it for profit. Then you have Big Content and Britney Spears and fucking Justin Bieber that are corporate "art", yet are an insult to true art and an insult to a healthy cultureQuote:
Moreover, is an education in "art" really worth while? Or social sciences or history? As a human being knowing those things is very helpful, but from a pure usefulness perspective they don't generate value.
Profit incentives are not a valuable human trait. In fact, they're definitively sociopathic. We have allowed a completely amoral entity/idea devoid of emotion control our humanity. We should probably stop letting sociopathy run our world
Disregarding the human rights of having vacation times, lots of days off are sometimes necessary to counter the productivity squeeze. It allows for fuller employment, fewer drags on the society, high purchasing power, etc. The reason we don't have it, like I said, is the productivity squeeze is important for the rich establishment to maintain their sultan status.Quote:
I guess what is odd to me is that you don't think people should ever have 100% leisure yet, you advocate tons of that via days off and early retirement. I read things like this and though I do not follow that it shows what is possible. I don't think that's really possible in many countries in this world.
Basically, full employment is around 3% unemployment because it has to account for transitions between jobs and the unemployable. So let's say we're running at 6% unemployment. One of the best ways to counter this is to mandate a couple extra vacation days and a couple hours reduced work weeks. This then means that in order to run at capacity, more workers must be hired. All you have to do is crunch the numbers and get the unemployment rate back down to 3%, and all is good. But this doesn't happen because it would mean that those benefiting from the productivity squeeze would have to reduce their enormous pay levels by paying slightly higher taxes and paying slightly more for labor. Much of Europe has extreme success with this sort of thing
Well, it works, but I wouldn't say it's the best way. Shit rolls downhill. In order for change to happen this way, the masses have to be hurting so badly that the special can't isolate themselves anymoreQuote:
Maybe the best way to bring down the system is to exploit it to the point that it can't survive anymore?
You're probably right. I'm not gonna sit here and claim US is worse than Russia as far as opportunity goes. But I will say that US lags far behind several European paradigms that we have every capacity to mimic (and even surpass). And we still have a massive dungeon where all the "problem people" of our society are being secretly hidden. In some ways, it's not a big as Russia's, but in others, it's bigger.Quote:
Lastly, to be clear im a Russian immigrant but an American citizen for a long time. So my context is based on parent stories and my own visits to the motherland, where a good portion of my family still lives and half are trying to desperately to immigrate here. Since the future is so bright here.
Yes and no. Will Eric Cantor ever not be a lying scumbag? No. Will Eric Cantor lose effective power to other leaders if rhetoric and public opinion changes enough? YesQuote:
He is just changing his words, will he actually change his actions though? It's like that kid who steals and gets caught, and his mother asks do you know what you did is wrong? He goes yes. Then he says he is sorry but the moment he sees the opportunity to steal that delicious fucking cookie he will. Words mean nothing from those who have no integrity and I think you and I should be in agreement that there are few, if any, politicians that stand behind the shit they say, when shit hits the fan.
Bottom line is that all politicians are whores. All of them. They are whores for the vote. People think they're whores for money first and foremost, but they're not, it's for the vote. But what happens is that the best way to get votes is to get money, so they then become defacto whores for big corp bribery/lobby/donations. There are a lot of exceptions in that many politicians use their elected office as a stepping stone for huge salaried positions after they leave office, but they also must get votes just enough for that to happen
So what happens is that because enough meaningful elections are within a couple percentage points of each other, a populist movement that doesn't get squashed will send incredible shockwaves through the system, and even the lying scumbags will have to bow their heads to the people.
OWS is such a big deal. I keep saying it because it's so damn true. Neither party has quashed it, and both have shown movement that they're trying to get the protesters on their side. This is SUCH a big thing. Because what happens is that when enough people watch it on the news and have conversations about it and agree with the sentiments, the whores in Washington have no choice but to conform
The establishment is very scared of OWS. The cops have been busting them up like crazy, that's really all the evidence you need that their bosses at Government Sachs want this thing to end. But it won't end. It will only get bigger. Maybe there will be a break for the winter or something, but it will come back even bigger next year. There are no other options. Our current economic accounting does not provide for a recovery, it actually determines that things are only going to slightly slide downhill in best case scenario, and then all the people fucked in the ass gonna come out swinging even more. OWS and what will be its progeny will force the establishment to eventually get their shit together and actually make policy that brings in jobs, increases wages, and reduces debt
http://28.media.tumblr.com/90kXAhOmk...cVO5o1_500.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by BooG690
Thanks dude, now let's hug it out!
!luck
Not to mention that populism like OWS is the only way Obama wins reelection. It may not work though since Barry O is not a populist. He gave the banks their friendliest Treasury Secretary ever in Timmy G and had Rahmy E call liberals "fucking retards", yet the entire time the only people other than the GOP establishment that understands how to win elections (the shunted liberals) have been telling Barry O to stop blowing the banks and corps because they're still gonna turn on him in the end
Lo n behold, the banks are beginning to abandon him. If Obama was a populist all this time, we'd have awesome policy changes and he'd be running with a solid 55% of the vote, but he refused to listen to people who actually know what they're talking about. I think the establishment Democrats are really just the good cop to the GOP bad cop anyways, so they actually want to lose. Obama was truly an outsider, and still is slightly, but like Cornell West said, he's been unwittingly molding into the establishment
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/us...ield.html?_r=1
We need Dylan Ratigan or Elizabeth Warren to drop some primary bombs with enormous populist push. I think they'd win both the primary and general, and we'd have our new FDR, but it won't happen
It is all relative. And people who've grown up in my country are realising that they'll never have it as good as their parents. These are people who've grown up having it constantly reinforced that if they do well in college and go to university the jobs and success will be there, and they're not. And not only have the jobs evaporated, but the state support systems have been dramatically cut back as a result of the recession.Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
This summer I worked for min wage in a shithole slots arcade in order to pay my rent. We were receiving resumes from graduates with good degrees in good universities in cities 100 miles away, willing to relocate just to work for peanuts in a shithole for 16 hours a week.
None of this is a problem for the bailed out banks. They're still quaffing champagne by the Thames without a care in the world. The 99% are pissed off about this.
When the protests reach Leeds (which they will) I'm joining in.
"Occupy Everywhere, then, is the kind of movement you get when people start to believe mainstream politicians have lost their principles, or are trapped by vested interests, or are all crooked.
That's the answer to the question "what". The answer to why now? Basically we are in danger of a global stagnation - it was HSBC's economics team that described it as a permafrost. It poses the question "who pays for the banking crisis" very acutely. And large numbers of people are now realising it is going to be them, and more painfully, their children. As in Greece, in that circumstance, for every protester camped in the freezing dawn there may be many more quietly fuming in their living rooms who feel the same way."
BBC News - 'Occupy' is a response to economic permafrost
I disagree with some of your thoughts above. How many people you know who went to college, did well, in a non throw away major and are working for peanuts?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ash256
Also bringing in greece will only complicate matters. Should Germany be paying for Greacian's days off? Or their cartel like employment system? Or their unwillingness to pay taxes?
Who are these people that have such negative thoughts that they will never have it as good as their parents? Are they people who whine about everything?
Feel free to ignore my Greece comments since they are bit off topic.
!luck
!Luck, you seriously never saw/heard some visual art/music/whatever that made you marvel at how goddamn amazing humans can be? This coming from an emigre of such a culturally rich nation like Russia truly surprises me.
This is fundamentally flawed. Some job functions simply can't work like that. Humans, and I am sure you agree, aren't machines. We can't just add server and run the rest of them at 90%. If you have a small company with 3 employees and one owner, he simply can't just add another person. He may only have a need for account manager, an accounting guy and a operations guy. Adding an extra person just doesn't make sense. And it may be the entire profit of the owner. This same type of issue happens within companies as well. If you only have 50 hours worth of work a week and the quality of people you get who are willing to work 50 hours/wk and make 100k/yr is one type vs. hiring two people to work 25/hr a week, each making 50k. Again im quoting fairly high income ranges here, but I think? my point is getting across that it isn't so simple. It may work with large manufacturing firms, where the skills aren't as specialized and you have 100 people working and giving them 10% more vacation time results in you needing to hire 10 more people and the hours work out. But, I don't think that's very common even in manufacturing firms.Quote:
Originally Posted by wufwugy
Let me know if my explanation here isn't clear.
Lastly, name me the countries in Europe where things are great right now?
-!luck
It's simply what the economists are saying:Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
http://www.ifs.org.uk/pr/frdb_recession.pdf
UK jobless at 17-year high deepens fears of slide into recession | Business | The Guardian
BBC News - Household income sees biggest fall since 1977
Biggest spending squeeze on families since 1921 | Business
Households Face Biggest Squeeze Since 1870 As Incomes Fall By £780 According To Deloitte | Business | Sky News
I appreciate that all of these reports say something slightly different but they build a bigger picture. Dropping income + high inflation = pissed off people.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not disagreeing with your points about the considerable importance of work ethic. I agree with you there. I'm saying that people are pissed off, and that the anger is justified. Every household in the UK, including its future children, have bailed out the banks, and the squeeze is just starting to be felt.
I fucking love beauty. I love some types of music. And it is amazing everything that we/humans are capable of. 100 mile plus runners come to mind. But, given the choice to feed my stomach or my soul. I wold rather eat today to fight another day, then to starve and make something glorious.Quote:
Originally Posted by eugmac
A little off topic, but would there be great art without pain? How much poverty is written due to pain, hunger, starvation and fucking humiliation. The stuff that truly reaches down and touches your heart was written by some of the most miserable people. I wonder and suspect they wouldn't of written it if they were happy.
Would I be sad if it was never written? Yes. But, would I ever for moment think to sacrifice my ability to eat or my parent's or my friends for art? Hell no. Maybe you will call me a hypocrite, I am not sure. I want a lot of this world, but I make choices about what I can get and what sacrifices I am willing to make.
You know they say that some art is priceless? But when you are cold you will burn that shit to stay warm, because life is worth living, but that is my opinion. If you won't burn it today, then I will pick it up from your dead body and burn it tomorrow if it means I can live another day.
We are all lucky that most of us don't have to make these types of choices everyday.
!luck
The problem is that the paradigm shifts under the feet of people who don't have the ability or mobility to influence much change. It wasn't too long ago that a "throwaway degree" had high value. And it won't be long before only a handful of degrees have value (it'll be the heavy math and computer ones). Even medicine is expected to get eviscerated in the decade to comeQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
I'll say I don't know as much about this as I could, but I know enough that what I say won't be too far from the truthQuote:
Also bringing in greece will only complicate matters. Should Germany be paying for Greacian's days off? Or their cartel like employment system? Or their unwillingness to pay taxes?
Greek luxuries weren't the problem, but Greek corruption. More importantly, though, the enormously corrupt EU private central banking is the problem. The lesser nations in the EU were doomed for huge debt from the very beginning with the creation of the Euro. The bankers are trying their hardest to get a "federal reserve" in Europe, and the finances of the whole thing are determining that places like Greece, Italy, Spain, are systemically screwed
Germany (and France) will end up paying for it. The situation in Europe is bad bad bad. If it is not addressed, we're looking at pretty much a 100% probability of global financial collapse. I do believe it will be addressed though, but the can will also be kicked down the road to the last minute. It'll be like the US banking collapse, but before they let Bear and Lehman go under. I do not think Germany will let an actual default happen. The difference is that everybody has their eyes on global finances now, whereas before the Crisis of 08, people just didn't believe it could happen. So that's good news I guess
Anyways, there are three options. 1. Greece defaults. Spain, Italy, Ireland follow suit. Then Germany and France are overrun with toxicity and their banks collapse, then the countries follow suit, then Wall Street (which is still a complete zombie that would collapse within months if Treasury/US taxpayers pulled the plug) collapses again, then the US is looking at TARP 10.0, and perhaps US would finally then nationalize the banking system instead of propping up the private banks. So option 1 is a real collapse. And it will happen if nobody does anything. There would be tremendous change for the good after the collapse though, just like with what happened in the Great Depression
Option 2. The German people (and French) rise up and tell the EU bankers to fuck themselves for all the debt they're imposing on Europe. The Euro becomes crushed and replaced with the national currencies from before, and all private banks that are forced to default become nationalized. This would be tough, but it's the best option. It would provide a pathway for all the nations to actually pay off the debt
Option 3. This is the one that will actually happen. Germany (and France) will bail out the banks and Greece and possibly Spain, Italy etc. The German people (and French) will rise up in severe anger at what will be a new drop in their purchasing power and stuff, and 1/3rd of poor EU countries will be stuck in an unbearable perpetual debt
The ONLY way out of this insane economic mess is to do what Iceland did. That is, nationalize the zombie banks. The fundamentals behind this entire global economy problem is a bank run, but in opposite form. It's the banks running on the people. As long as private banks are not held accountable for their terrible deeds, as long as collapsing financial structures are not nationalized, nothing will be fixed.
I think the "whiners" thing is a red herring. We're not whining. We're stating the facts that things are indeed less just and less equal than they should be. It also happens that a few previous generations lived in a more just and more equal societyQuote:
Who are these people that have such negative thoughts that they will never have it as good as their parents? Are they people who whine about everything?
People are working harder now than any time in the last several decades, yet results are worse. This is a structural problem, and that's what the protests are about
Naw you're right on your example. It doesn't work across the board. But it is an important macroeconomic policy. Economics involves several different remedies in conjunction. I recall a couple guys on a different forum I frequent who live in Germany and Norway stating that during the worst of the recession, nobody in the large firms they work for lost their jobs because the response was to collectively reduce hours by like 7%. The US response has been the opposite. Large firms are cutting labor while increasing hours for people still on the payroll, then the executives are actually pocketing MORE cash than before the recession.Quote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands are among those outperforming US by a lot. And it may be much more than appearances. They have MUCH stronger social safety nets so those who are unemployed are not nearly as fucked as in the US, and the US muddies the economic data by labeling things differently i.e. participation rates, underemployed rates, etc would show that US woes are actually much worse in comparison to those countries
I'd like to expound on this. Use Norway as an exampleQuote:
Originally Posted by !Luck
Norway is performing very well. Virtually full employment and a huge savings rate. Low wealth inequality, high welfare-ism, and high natural resources
How is Norway different than the US? Not on natural resources. That's the one thing we're either equal on or actually better at. US is a powerhouse of natural resources, not to mention the hub of business and intellectual resources. American SHOULD be outperforming every single country on the planet in this regard.
US has an incredibly low welfare program. By far the worst in fully developed countries. So here's something we do much differently than a nation that kicks our asses in living standards. Maybe welfare programs can actually be good things? That's what the data says, and really that's what matters
Norway has very strong safeguards against wealth inequality. US is rivaling Iran in such terrible equity. Maybe mandating against a productivity squeeze with corporate regulations and higher taxes on executives is the way to go? Norway does it, and they stomp our asses in living standards
I recall a Norwegian on a different forum detailing the superb savings of his country being due to very strong public banking and investments. Instead of letting private banks and corporate executives steal everything from everybody, they actually care about their people and have been investing for the country instead of for the richies. This could change in the future though, as I think private banks have begun setting foot inside Norwegian governance. It will take a long damn time though, and Norway has very strong socialistic principles that would probably stop any banking takeover anyways. Again, US should take a note out of the book a country that wins the economic results match by boom headshot
Norwegian employment is 3%. What else needs to be said? They're different on US pretty much only on political policy. I want to take what they do that works, and make it better. I don't want more of the same old suckjobs for Government Sachs and NYPDMorgan Chase
inb4 "but the taxes in Norway or so high."
doesn't cocco bill live in norway
FWIW, I'm having trouble finding definitive data, but it's possible that effective tax rates on the non-rich in US are actually higher than Norway. The middle class in US pays a shitload in "hidden" taxes. The problem isn't taxes, it's mainly just banking. Well, the problem is a lot of stuff, but if you change only one thing about the US, it would be to move from private central banking system to a public central banking system. The Fed turns a shitload of taxpayer money into executive bonuses. In a public banking system, we'd actually be trying to keep people in their homes by refinancing, but in a Wall Street owned America, bank profits are the only thing that matters and the bank gets to keep the house they fraudulently sold to you in the first place
There's a documentary that can be found on Netflix called The One Percent. It was made back in 2006 by one of the sons of the patriarch of the Johnson & Johnson family. Worth a watch.
[Occupytimessquare] 1 Marine vs. 30 Cops (Marine Wins) - YouTube!
Holy pwnage Batman.
that was awesome, thanks
pretty cool... wish he articulated (god, it sucks that using that word in reference to a black person makes it such a loaded term..) his points better, but still, good on him.
Funny enough, the most articulate person I can think of is a black man (Cornell West)